Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday December 30, 2010 @04:03PM
from the I'll-have-a-squashed-strawberry-alley-cat dept.

Pickens writes "The magic of a new app called 'Top Shelf' is that if you want to mix a new drink, the app thinks the way most of us do — instead of going out to buy the ingredients, it shows you how to build a new drink with the ingredients you have available. Feeling indecisive? Let Top Shelf pick a random recipe for you. You can get a random drink from the entire database, a specific category, your favorites, search results, or the liquor cabinet."

And back in the ancient days of the web I used a website call webtender [webtender.com], according to the copyright line it's been around since 95 =)

I'm pretty sure I had a DOS app for this that not only came up with drinks you could mix with what you had on hand but also more general recipes, too. It sounded really good until I started to try to keep a kitchen inventory on my PC -- I abandoned that after about a week.

Yeah, but this is an app and it's on the iPhone. That makes it at least two orders of magnitude cooler than any Web v1.0 website. Looking at Webtender, they're using cgi-bin scripts. OMG! That's not Ajax, or Ruby on Rails, or anything cool. That's like a Netscape-type of website.

The problem with Webtender (and the other, very similar, drinks-making sites I've seen) suffer from the problem that every combination of liquids, however repulsive, has been given a whimsical name and logged as a permissible "mixed drink". So if you tell it that your liquor cabinet holds a half-empty bottle of dry vermouth, a dusty bottle of Peychaud's bitters and a jar of cocktail onions; it's going to give you a list of nine different "drinks" you can make.

There used to be one that also advised you which ingredients to buy next to most effectively increase the number of cocktails you could make in combination with your existing ingredients. I found that a very useful feature when I was building up my stockpile of goodies. I can't remember what it was called though.....

Unfortunatley, A few days ago, I did find that we didn't have any rum in the house. And as I've found, a strong Jack Daniels eggnog really doesn't taste as good as you'd think. And with my normal mixing proportions (In a pint glass, mix 75% alcohol with 25% eggnog. Stir, and enjoy), it took me a whole 5 minutes before I could just make myself a pint of "Jack and no nog egg nog". Not quite as festive, but I was well lit.:)

and it's silly simple to make too - if you got a large drinks database, it's not that hard to devise the means to ask the user what he has and match the results. it's something that could be given as a programming practice work for a 12 year old.

I'm pretty sure there were some palm apps that did this too. and one popular app for s60 in early s60 days was an app that suggested drinks - which is handy to have in a bar(where mobility matters).

Many generations of our elders had no Internet, TV or radio. Consequently, they spent a lot of time socializing and discovering delicious liquor combinations. No reason we can't leverage some of that good info.

First off, would it really kill an editor (or god forbid, a submitter) to google something first to see if it really is a new idea? The College Bar database has been doing this for years, and I know it's not the first.

Which brings me to why I replied to this post - no. There are certain ingredients that play off each other well, and those which don't.

The biggest problem with the default College Bar database was that it was full of garbage just like you're proposing - "hey, put this in and this in and this in and give it a funny name" that someone submitted after they "invented it" in their dorm room. Many of these so-called drinks were useless crap you'd never want to drink, and had the gimmick of weird ingredients, easy ingredients, many ingredients, a stupid name, and/or some "stunt" involved.

While you are certainly welcome to mix Midori, Limoncello, Pepto Bismol, Jagermeister, Faygo Red Pop and Bailey's into a glass and call it a drink, the fact is that nobody over 25 or with any taste whatsoever gives a shit about your nasty frat boy drink. There's a reason why only 20-something girls who are desperate for attention consume drinks with "sexy" names like Blowjobs, Sex on the Beach, or a Slippery Bald Beaver. These are drinks for little whores, not adults.

This isn't to say people have to agree about what constitutes a good drink - I prefer a martini shaken, not stirred, but if it has anything other than gin, vermouth, and some sort of garnish in it (and possibly a bit of bitters if you're trying to re-invent the wheel), don't call it a martini. Note I didn't say don't drink it, I'm just sick of "martini" drinks like choclatetini and appletini which are the exact opposite of what a martini actually is, sweet versus dry, syrupy instead of thin, etc. I also want no part of anything with Kahluah in it, but other reasonable people may thoroughly enjoy a White Russian.

The first thing I had to do was delete all the frat, gimmick, and whore drinks from the College Bar. Eventually, I just populated College Bar with my own database from a well-loved cocktail book that I had lying around. It was useful when you wanted to try something you hadn't had before, hadn't considered the possibilities of a particular ingredient, but didn't want to resort to awful crap you get when college kids make "drinks" whose primary goal is to taste like Coca Cola, fruit juice, or the sort of get-drunk-immediately swill created by people who consider Bacardi shots an actual drink instead of a stunt.

I've been running 100001 cocktails on the droid for quite awhile now. Does the same thing, although I've found much better drinks in the 1001 (huh trend here) cocktail book with full color alcohol porn photos of each one that someone gave me awhile ago.

No. That's what champagne is (known as sparkling wine when not produced from the Champagne region of France). As is the German wine made from the Gewurztraminer grape. It's a by-product of the fermentation process.

It is now. Words get appropriated, language changes. Deal with it. Or try to reclaim back the word "gay" and see how far you get.

"Application" still means application. "App" is no longer a short form of "application," it's a short form of "Iphone / iPad / iPod touch application." It's been that way since the, "there's an app for that" ads. I know, marketing sucks, but it sucks because it works, and this one worked.

This app is awesome and extremely handy, but new? This was one of the first apps I downloaded for my iPhone 3G, well over two years ago, when it was free in an "introductory" special and had a different name (which has long escaped me).

Are driving me crazy. The drinks turn out good though, I just read it as a squirt of this, two thumbs of that and mouthful of that other stuff. Plant a cocktail berry and an umbrella somewhere in there and drink up.Luckily, I RTFA and it says they have metric units as well. The first time I've seen a (decent) drink recipe app that has centiliters. Just in time for new year's eve!

Call me old fashioned, but this is not a problem. Usually, I just pour whatever I have !
Scotch and water caught on that way!!
Green Creme de Mint and OJ, we tried it at my frat! We could not give it away except the serious alcis

I discovered the Old Fashioned earlier this year. It's basically whisky and soda, but the little touches (bitters, muddled sugar, garnish) transform it into something sublime. There's not a thing wrong with a good martini or scotch on the rocks, but sometimes it's nice to try something a little more complex.

Vodka, even "good" vodka, is lifeless. Water and ethanol at it's best, where even the best companies' claim to fame is just how many times they've filtered it to get any and all taste out of it.

Try a good whiskey. I prefer bourbon, but any higher tier whiskey will do. I don't see how anyone would drink vodka except as random alcohol to pour into a juice when other spirits are available. If you don't like the whiskey, try a spiced rum instead. Don't like it as much as whiskey, but they're still enjoyabl

Most of what passes as "good" vodka, at least here in Canada, is pretty bad. It's not supposed to mean filtered a billion times, it's supposed to mean it tastes good. I didn't really get what vodka was about until I was given a bottle of Luksusowa, which is delicious on the rocks or even just as a straight sipping drink.

I'm with you about whiskey though. I have a hard time finding good bourbon (though had the pleasure of drinking some good ones over Christmas) so I mostly stick to scotch. Mmmmmmm....

Wow! Someone else with good taste! I found that brand through a friend of mine. I really don't care for vodka's in general, But Luksusowa is really quite good. I found I don't care for Grain Alcohols at all. Potato (like Luksusowa) and Grape, (NOT GRAPE FLAVORED) like Ciroc are pretty good. they're excellent in gimlets, lemon drops, and screwdrivers, but the best part is they stand very well on their own.

There's a hint of taste corresponding to what the vodka was made of. But, yeah, most people do not perceive that.

Water and ethanol at it's best, where even the best companies' claim to fame is just how many times they've filtered it to get any and all taste out of it.

Try a good whiskey. I prefer bourbon, but any higher tier whiskey will do. I don't see how anyone would drink vodka except as random alcohol to pour into a juice when other spirits are available. If you don't like the whiskey, try a spiced rum instead. Don't like it as much as whiskey, but they're still enjoyable too.

To me whiskey tastes like alcohol which had a piece of old rotten wood immersed in it for months.

Not in the US: Vodka'' is neutral spirits so distilled, or so treated after
distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without
distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color. (Code of Federal Regulations, title 27, volume 1)

Taken literally that would mean only Everclear is a 'real' vodka, which is of course ludicrous. Many Vodka's are known for the trace mineral left in them from either the source water or from the distilling process (copper kettles mostly). Anyone who thinks trace minerals don't affect taste is an idiot.

It's also important to note that most (possibly all, but I'm certain of "most") Scandinavian countries have the same laws. Unless it's flavoured vodka, stick to Polish and Russian brands actually manufactured in Poland and Russia. A lot of American vodkas have Russian names, there's a reason why most of them are on the bottom shelf. Stolichnaya's cheap enough that you shouldn't be saving money by buying Kentucky "Kamchatka" or "Crystal Palace" swill.